The Amazing Story of the Interrobang

In the comments about yesterday's post regarding William Faulkner's birthday, I noted that he and I both use punctuation, although I do allow that I use a whole lot more, liberally plastering every sentence with all sorts of stuff, whether it's needed or not. I slipped in a reference to the interrobang (and, of course, misspelled it) and Vachon was perplexed as to what this might be.

Well, ::chuckling lightly:: it's not a unit of European currency, nor ::thoughtfully stroking chin and taking down a note-to-self:: is it any one of those odd fetish things you see on the Internet.

The interrobang is a punctuation mark combining the oomph of an exclamation point with the quizzical look of the interrogatory mark--picture a question mark overlapped with an exclamation mark, each sharing the same dot at the bottom.

Better yet, go here and get the whole story.

I use the concept a lot, as when I write things like "Wesley Clark!?", but most people don't have anything loaded on their computers which will support an interrobang, so I just stick with the old two-stroke method.
posted by Terry at 12:09:00 PM